The New York Academy of Medicine has been dedicated for over 150 years to enhancing the health of public through education, research and advocacy. Each year the Academy sponsors a Basic Science Symposium which explores a developing field in a comprehensive manner. This approach is chosen to allow maximal interaction among researchers and to enhance the creativity of the field by identify new problems to be addressed and new approaches to seeking answers to the problems. Among mammalian immunologists, there has been a recent shift in paradigms accompanying the recognition that much of the specificity of the immune response for pathogens is guided by innate immune response recognition mechanisms. At the same time, recent molecular evidence suggests that innate immune response mechanisms are conserved in evolution. As a result, it seems that genetic experiments that can be conducted in lower organisms are likely to provide new insights into mammalian immune responses. This meeting represents the first attempt to bring together scientists from the very different backgrounds of mammalian immunobiology, Drosophila genetics, and plant disease resistance to discuss this emerging field. This one and one-half day symposium to be held on December 7-8, 1998: "Innate Immunity: Ancient Signals, Modern Implications" seeks to bring scientists from complementary backgrounds together to address this new field before an audience of scientists and clinicians with interest in basic immunology. Topics to be presented include: Mammalian Innate Immune Responses, Links Between Innate and Adaptive Immunity, Innate Immunity and the Recognition of Danger, Insect and Plant Immune Responses, Rel Proteins and the Diversity of Innate Immune Responses.